re in store, these outlaws
were as different from their present state as this black night was
different from the bright day they waited for. Wilson, though he played
a deep game of deceit for the sake of the helpless girl--and thus did
not have haunting and superstitious fears on her account--was probably
more conscious of impending catastrophe than any of them.

The evil they had done spoke in the voice of nature, out of the
darkness, and was interpreted by each according to his hopes and fears.
Fear was their predominating sense. For years they had lived with some
species of fear--of honest men or vengeance, of pursuit, of starvation,
of lack of drink or gold, of blood and death, of stronger men, of luck,
of chance, of fate, of mysterious nameless force. Wilson was the type of
fearless spirit, but he endured the most gnawing and implacable fear of
all--that of himself--that he must inevitably fall to deeds beneath his
manhood.

So they hunched around the camp-fire, brooding because hope was at
lowest ebb; listening because the weird, black silence, with its moan
of wind and hollow laugh of brook, compelled them to hear; waiting for
sleep, for the hours to pass, for whatever was to come.

And it was Anson who caught the first intimation of an impending doom.

CHAPTER XXIII

"Listen!"

Anson whispered tensely. His poise was motionless, his eyes roved
everywhere. He held up a shaking, bludgy finger, to command silence.

A third and stranger sound accompanied the low, weird moan of the wind,
and the hollow mockery of the brook--and it seemed a barely perceptible,
exquisitely delicate wail or whine. It filled in the lulls between the
other sounds.

"If thet's some varmint he's close," whispered Anson.

"But shore, it's far off," said Wilson.

Shady Jones and Moze divided their opinions in the same way.

All breathed freer when the wail ceased, relaxing to their former
lounging positions around the fire. An impenetrable wall of blackness
circled the pale space lighted by the camp-fire; and this circle
contained the dark, somber group of men in the center, the dying
camp-fire, and a few spectral trunks of pines and the tethered horses on
the outer edge. The horses scarcely moved from their tracks, and their
erect, alert heads attested to their sensitiveness to the peculiarities
of the night.

Then, at an unusually quiet lull the strange sound gradually arose to a
wailing whine.

"It's thet crazy wench cr